Every Day by David Levithan

Hi everyone!  I'm back with a new layout and a new (well, slightly amended) blog name.  I'm going to be focusing more on books for teens--and that doesn't mean the cliched "Teen Books" that we all find so disgusting!  Think more books that will interest a teenager and really get them thinking.  As a teenaged writer and reader, I've realized that as much as one can love reading, when you've got school, homework and myriad responsibilities, it's hard to find a book to read, and even harder to find time to read it. So allow me to help you out.
In David Levithan's Every Day, main character A has a remarkable, unheard of, unexplainable situation.  He (gender is unspecified, but for the sake of this post I'll go with male pronouns) wakes up every day in a different body, living someone else's life for 24 hours.  The person whose body and life he inhabits is always his age, (sixteen during the course of the book) and they have always lived in the same general area.  A has never known why he is this way or even what he is.  Fearful of being locked up, he tells no one about his situation.  Then, one day, A falls in love with Rhiannon, a sweet and caring girl who, underneath her prettiness, is deeply insecure.  Suddenly he's twisting the rules he's created for his situation and doing wild, dangerous things just to see her again.  As he engages in a seemingly hopeless quest to win Rhiannon's heart, one thing becomes inevitable--that he will be caught.  And when he is, he attracts the attention of one very sinister character that offers A a difficult choice.
Let me just say that at first glance, Every Day was not my kind of book.  The plot just seemed so fantastic that I wasn't sure if I would like it at all.  So I was shocked when I finished this book, and I wanted more--immediately.  What made Every Day so incredibly grabbing (in every way--let's just say that I had a great deal of trouble resisting the urge to take it to the dinner table) had to have been A's unique voice.  His persona was a combination of incredibly wise and incredibly scared, as he's in the unusual predicament of having no control--none at all--over what happens to him.  Or maybe it was Levithan's genius for crafting new, fascinating worlds and situations as often as A woke up in a new body.  Either way, I was hooked.
Is there anyone who would dislike Every Day?  I don't know.  By all means, if you don't want to be dazzled by a story craftsman as wonderful as Levithan, stay away.  But this book really does appeal to all genres--it has realism, fantasy, romance, and it manages to touch on some tough teen issues such as drug addiction and depression through the characters A inhabits.  Levithan really seems to understand the ethos of A's fateful line: "We all contain mysteries, especially when seen from the inside."  Ain't that the truth?